Rationality and Utility from the Standpoint of Evolutionary Biology

A major motive of these comments is to offer a perspective in which the important paper on perceptions of fairness by Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler (in this issue) is moved from being a description of an exogenous factor "distorting" market rationality and becomes instead an integral part of a theory of collective rationality. In anticipatory summary, perceptions of fairness (like moral norms in general) are our individually rational preferences as to how others behave. If the collective-goods payoffs are sufficient so that the cooperative system is worth maintaining and if that social system is intact, then it may be individually rational to abide by those norms oneself as a rationally paid cost in a strategy of getting others to live up to them. This will be argued on grounds drawn from evolutionary biology and, in particular, from the issues surrounding "altruism" that are so focal to sociobiology. A growing number of economists are participating in a potential integration of economics and evolutionary theory. From participants in this conference this includes, at least, Simon (1973, 1983), Becker (1976), Nelson and Winter (1982), and Lucas (in this issue). Among our nonpresent colleagues participating are Hirshleifer (1977, 1978) and Samuelson (1983). Because I believe this is a trend that should be further developed, I am going to preface my analysis of the issues raised by Kahneman et al.'s paper by an overview of other aspects of the sociobiological perspective relevant to the total agenda of this conference. Shared in common by biology's "population genetics" (the mathematical theory of the evolutionary process) and econometrics are models in which populations of individual decision makers that are optimizing utilities produce macro effects. The concepts of "decision making," "utilities," "self-interest," and self-sacrificial "altruism" are, of course, used in biology as a convenient metaphorical shorthand rather than as a literal description of cognitive decision processes and

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